Teams 15 | Matches played 144 | |
Premiers Footscray reserves(2nd premiership) J. J. Liston Trophy Michael Gibbons (Williamstown) | ||
The 2016 Victorian Football League season is the 135th season of the Victorian Football Association/Victorian Football League Australian rules football competition.
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There were 15 teams competing in the league. The season started on Saturday 9 April and concluded Sunday 25 September with the VFL Grand Final, won by the Footscray reserves, who defeated the Casey Scorpions by 31 points at Etihad Stadium. It was the Footscray reserves' second VFL premiership, won in just its third season in the competition.
League membership and affiliations
At the end of the 2015 season, North Melbourne ended its ten-year partial reserves affiliation with North Ballarat. The move was in part motivated by a burgeoning partnership between the City of Ballarat and North Melbourne's AFL rivals Western Bulldogs, with North Melbourne not wishing to continue its investment in the Ballarat area if the rewards were to be reaped by another club. North Melbourne's existing partial affiliation with Werribee was upgraded to a full affiliation, and North Ballarat continued to contest the VFL as a stand-alone senior club.
Beginning in the 2016 season, a new statewide women's football league known as VFL Women's was established by AFL Victoria. The competition was formed from clubs previously established in the Victorian Women's Football League, and was aligned and co-branded with the VFL to improve market penetration. The new competition was composed of ten clubs: Darebin Falcons, Diamond Creek (Creekers), Eastern Devils, Melbourne University Mugars, St Kilda Sharks, and VU Western Spurs (all from the VWFL Premier Division), joined by Cranbourne Eagles, Geelong Magpies, Knox Falcons and Seaford Tigers (all from the VWFL Division 1).